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The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread.
Index » RtK Volume 1
caedmon wrote:
Congrats, mastermx!
Thanks caedmon 
You've gotta get RTK out of the way as fast as possible. Sentences is where the real fun happens.
I just finished it! I'm moving right on to book 3!
Thanks for your help and support everyone
Congrats to everyone who's here too! i did it too ^_^' - hope this time it'll last, i took my time (restarted in august so about 3-1/2 month) and i really hope it'll stick
thank you all for all your stories and fabrice for this site that keep getting better
it's been fun - challenging - and being there finally is rewarding i don't think i can stop
first i'll do the new joyo planned for 2010 since rtk3 doesn't seem to be ruled by any order i'll start by those - and of course readings!
thanks!!!!!
Group hug! (*seriously, don't touch me!*)
I doubt I would have pulled it off without this site! A big greasy smooch for the RevTK admin! Time to hit that donate button and drop a dime on 'em! 
So many people's (often offensive) stories were helpful, I can only hope my own (often offensive) contributions will help future winners!
Damn it, I did it 
For and foremost, I would like to express my immense gratitude to fuaburisu for making this awesome website and all of you who contributed the stories. I literally could not have done it without you guys! Also congratulations to everybody who made it too (and Koos83, you will make it too 
)
For people who are interested:
About my Japanese journey:
In January 2009 I knew I wanted to learn Japanese, because I intended then and still do to study in Japan in Octobre 2010. I got a Nintendo DS with My Japanese Coach for Christmas and have been working through that until July (I have never seen this program mentioned here, so a quick review: it's fun and easy and pretty useful to learn new vocab (although it is by far not as effective as SRS). On the other hand it is very superficial when it comes to grammar and the program in general is not that well thought out). With this program I also learned like 150 Kanji 'brute force' (as you can imagine writing practice is pretty ideal with a DS, although stroke orders were sometimes wrong). I don't know if I would have done it again, but it gave me a good headstart with vocab and grammar.
In the summer I went trough a pretty old but fairly decent Japanese for beginners book.
At the end of August I was searching for some method to learn kanji and vocab more effective, because I did not have an effective repetition mechanism.
At first when I saw some reference to RTK, I thought I was reading an infomercial. It all seemed way to good to be true. But after a little more research, it turned out to be for real
About my RTK journey:
I started on the first of September, so I averaged around 25 cards/day. I did not miss a single day of reviewing At the end (last 1.5 month) I had like around 100 due cards/ day, so I was pretty terrified to miss a single day. With the learning of new cards (for which I almost exclusively used stories from this website), it still took me around 1.5hrs/day.
I never let my failed stack have more than 30 cards in it. I don't know why ppl here think they're done when they have a failed stack of 400, I mean failed is failed imho. Luckily I did not fail that much, the last 2 months when I started to look at my retention rate, it was always around 90%. My average retention rate when I export my data is also 90%. But maybe I am a bit too easy on myself when I am awarding a succes or fail On a side note, I never (except maybe the first few days) used the easy button. It seemed too subjective for me, as I found Kanji's that were easily learned, hard to remember and the other way around. However, when I am going to use anki hereafter is seems inevitable to use it.
One thing that is also maybe worth mentioning is that I never wrote a single character down, I only thought of the character in my head. I think it saves a lot of time and for me I think that Japanese writing skill is pretty superfluous, because I do not see when I will need it in Japan, especially because most of the writing is behind the PC. However I am of course able to write it, only it is really ugly Also when you have seen so many characters, you get a good intuitive feel for the stroke order.
Ow and damn it, I thought my English was pretty good, but there were still a bunch of keywords I did not know ......so I guess it was a brush up for my English as well
On the whole, I think it went pretty well. I did not have any real rough patches. The entire time I was doing it, I did not think it was extremely fun (except for some genius stories ) or extremely awful. I just stuck by it. Although when you're so close to the end you get impatient, so the last 200 I did with 50/day At that point I knew that I could overcome the extra reviews from that.
What is to come:
As I have been reading a lot of this forum (probably evading behaviour ), the consensus seems that KO2001 is a good next step. So I will go on to do that, although I am a bit overwhelmed by the size of it (3000 sentences or something?), because it seems to me, reading the first sentences, that it takes a lot more time to learn an entire sentence than a Kanji.
For me, RTK3 seems not useful enough to be worth the effort, I'll just add new Kanji when I encounter them.
Last edited by kame3 (2009 November 22, 11:33 am)
mattimus wrote:
So to the webmaster, and all those who contributed to the pool of stories, I thank you from the bottom of my ever-loving heart. A few years from now I hope to visit to Japan, and when I get there I will take any and all of you out for a beer on me.
I am living in Tokyo now, and I will remember that quote!
I started 18 months ago... It was the craziest year of my life (always changing between unstable jobs, sometimes working 2 jobs at the same time, sleeping only 5 or 6 hours a day, the hard process of applying for Monbukagakusho, finally getting the scholarship and moving to Japan, facing the end of a relationship, adapting to a new life, plus lots more), but I realize the journey has just begun.
2:18am, 6 Dec 2009, I reached the end of the book. Here are the stats:
Kanji Count : 2042
Total Reviews : 15598
Joined : 19 Aug 2008
For me, this was a peaceful, tranquil, victory. no jumping around for me, just a nostalgic memory of how my life was when I started, and all the crazy stuff that happened to me until now. I am filled with relief more than anything else, since I had quite a few moments of doubt, wondering if I could get this through to the very end. I am much more confident in my abilities and will power, as a result of this.
Time to face the next phase of SRSing... Grammar patterns, vocabulary, readings...
I will start by attacking Tae Kim and A Basic Dictionary of Japanese Grammar.
In the listening part, I am already having crazy meetings every week with Japanese people, who can barely speak English. After one month, I can feel definite improvements on my listening abilities, even without understanding most of the words. My pronounciation is good, but still way too slow... Still, I am really hopeful.
I have laughed with your stories, felt nostalgic at remembering the heroes of my childhood (it was not rare for me to interrupt my kanji study just to see youtube videos of Bruce Lee, Mr, T and Star Trek), and enjoyed the honesty of the dirtier stories.
It`s amazing, the power of this thing called Internet.
A deep thanks also to Fabrice, for this amazing website. It was half of the winning formula. If I had to do this only with the book, before SRS was invented, I doubt I could have made it. Or maybe it would have taken much more.
Also congrats to all who finished, and to those who will finish from now on.
Best Regards from Portugal (and now, Tokyo!),
Bebio
Last edited by bebio (2009 December 05, 12:04 pm)
I just finished it a couple of seconds ago
yayyy!
I wanted to thank all of you guys for the help and support given.
From the 'spiderman' to the 'chess' hints and so on.
Thank you, you made reaching the top easier and better.
Luca
Just FINISHED! breezed through my last 27 characters today
thank you all, have had an amazing time working through this book (and on this site in particular) so thanks Fabrice for everything!
i have been coming on here as a matter of habit for what is now just less than 2 months now -not missing a day of reviews and possibly spending a bit too long thinking up stories :p but man i feel like it was worth it. thanks for starting me off on this journey- i feel ready to take on the (japanese) world right now.
